- Transplanting that simple answer,
getting these plants in the ground and doing it quickly
and efficiently and easily.
I've noticed over the years of teaching this,
that it's often over-thought I know overdone,
and there are actually five key,
simple steps to doing it nicely.
One is that just to make a hole of the appropriate size,
no bigger, leave most of the soil undisturbed,
make that hole slightly deeper than you might think.
That's the second,
the third one is when you plant, to push the plant,
the root ball in firmly,
the fourth one is to leave the hole unfilled.
So you're leaving a bit of a hole in the ground.
And then the fifth one is watering.
We'll do a bit of that filling for you.
It'll fill in over time.
And that all works basically. It's really quick.
And when you got the right tools as well,
dibbers, wooden dibber, that's always been my tool
of choice for 40 years now,
I call it a long-handled dibber.
This was my old one made from a handle,
a tool handle, any tool handle, you can make your own,
just make sure the end is more or less the size you want
for the plants root ball.
This is one that I've just had made
and it's now for sale, Garden Imports.
We've been looking for a long time to,
for someone to make a dibber like this.
Cause we get asked a lot, you know,
you can do a lot with a long handle,
do like drawing lines for spacing, that kind of thing.
And actually making the hole without leaning over too much.
And there's a link where you can look at this and buy it at
the end of the video description.
So how big a hole to make?
Well, it depends which how big your plants are.
And my favorite size of plant actually
is the small one here.
That way you can start to see the roots coming out over,
slightly outside the module root ball is good
and it's small, but that means
it gets less transplant shock it's called,
which is when it goes in the ground and has to kind of
adjust to its new setting.
These are probably about five days older and these are
endives and chicories, by the way,
they're still good for planting generally though,
I find better results from that. Believe it or not.
And then these are plants that have gone over a bit,
but I brought them along just to show you,
you can still plant those,
but they will suffer real bad transplant shock.
And those two leaves probably will die before you suddenly
see new growth coming out with the middle.
So that's chard and there's some multi-tone beetroot.
So I'm going to actually make little holes for all of these
in the bed, this is a no dig bed.,
so whether you need a bit of practice,
I'm going to do five row planting here,
just to give you an idea.
How hard you need to push will obviously depend how
soft or hard your soil is, but with the long handle,
you got good leverage if the soil is quite firm,
if this all was really dry before you begin,
then you might need to water first.
So here I am popping in the plant.
You see it's gone in a bit below ground and that sometimes
even now I look at that think crikey, but he's fine.
You'll see, they can even look a bit so much
sometime soon after planting now, actually for these two,
because they've got very long stems,
particularly that chard I'm making that hole even a little
deeper because I want always the stem to be buried.
So ground level will be there.
And all of that is above ground.
All of that bit is below ground.
So I'm pushing pretty firm,
you see I'm not filling in same as the beetroot,
that's it, that's job done until
we get to the watering stage.
Next size up, these are slightly larger modules.
They need probably twice as much compost to fill a tray
for this size, and it has, as a result,
40 cells in a tray compared to 60 in that one,
but you'll grow bigger plants.
So if you want to grow bigger plants, for whatever reason,
when I do it, the main reason is that
I'm waiting for a previous planting to finish,
especially at this time of year, this is summer.
And it means also then I need a slightly bigger hole.
So you give the dibber a bit of a wiggle like that,
push a little bit deeper and give it a wiggle.
And I'm planting on the square, it's got,
we've got roughly equal spacing between plants
and there's another chicory.
In she goes, lettuce, so these don't have long stems,
so they don't need especially deep hole, firm push.
It's almost that firm push,
there's a another bigger chicory
and that one has got a bit of a long stem.
So that hole is a bit deeper.
So that can go in like that.
And then there's an endive here.
And finally, I'll finish on this one, which I will again,
make a slightly deeper hole.
Cause this is a brassica, cabbages, broccoli,
this is broccoli, in fact, purple sprouting for next spring.
You see how they tend to develop long stems.
They carry on making long stems after planting.
So you can sort of check that a bit
by putting them in that deep.
And that will make it a sort of sturdier plant
disappearing right there.
And again, you don't need to fill that in.
And the third size of transplants I've got here are in pots.
So those three started life in one of these.
So we either sow direct or prick them out
into one of those and then pop them into like,
this was a module of the purple sprouting broccoli
that just over two weeks ago,
went into this part and you can see how it's carried on
growing basically, that's what you want.
So it's now a bigger plant.
This is only necessary if you're waiting for something
to finish, like we were waiting for broad beans,
they've just finished, and so these can go
in the ground now and I'm going to show you
how that happens, same, similar story for leeks.
These were sown in April, leeks are very slow to start,
started in a module tray and it very quick
to pot on you just feel that we compost
it's a similar process,
actually make a little hole,
push it in quite deep and that's it, that's your potting on.
And then the kale again, same story.
That was an early mate, roughly two months ago.
And for these, with the trowel,
what I do is you don't need a huge trowel
but hopefully it will have a nice sharp side and smooth
and clean and just make a precise sized hole like that
and push it in deep.
This one, I will fill a little bit,
cause it's quite a big hole,
but I'm doing the firm pushing again.
So it's 1, 2, 3.
Sometimes you can do three actually
and pull it towards you like that.
It's a bit dry here.
This was cauliflower until recently actually
for these it would have paid to water a bit perhaps before,
like certainly by leaving the hole open,
it's giving me that ease of watering because
there's a hollow there.
So this is another good reason for leaving the hole open.
More of the water that you put on is going to flow
into the hole, these leeks, by the way,
I'm not looking for the long white shank that you sometimes
see, recommended, I mean, you can do that if you want.
But they weren't very well at that kind of depth.
The top of the pots about inch and a half,
three to four centimeters below ground level,
and there they are, they're all in the ground.
So all that remains is to water.
And there's two small differences here
for very small plants,
it might be good to keep the rows on like that so that
you're not jetting, large amount of water into the hole.
You can hold it quite close.
Often the hole fills up. Like you can see there,
which is great. And then the water slowly soaks in.
And then for the larger plants, I'll take this off.
And this is a way of being economical with water as well.
You can do that,
and you can see how the holes,
they're still staying there,
but they are filling in a bit.
And for these big plants,
I'm giving correspondingly more water, partly cause
the pots were a little bit dry and they're big plants.
They're going to suck a lot of water out,
probably if it stayed sunny I'd water again tomorrow.
And maybe after that in a couple of days
if it didn't rain and that's just to water enough,
keep all of the root balls moist until
they've got into the surrounding soil,
and it's the little one that will do that most rapidly
in proportion to the amount of compost it has there,
if you want to find out more about all of this process,
I cover it in great detail in my online course too.
And you can buy that separately in modules and we're turning
that into a book actually as well,
which will be on sale from Christmas 2021.